Basab Pradhan

From zero to over $50 billion in 20 years. That’s been the meteoric rise of the Indian IT-BPO industry. For an industry of such significance, to India and the world, it is not very well understood outside the industry. Perhaps because it doesn’t manufacture a physical product. Or perhaps because it is such a new […]

Matt Richtel investigates the mystery of why laptops and not iPads need to be pulled out of bags for the X-Ray machine at airport security. From the New York Times What’s the distinction between the devices? Similar shapes, many similar functions, the tablet is thinner but not by much. Is the iPad a lower security […]

I recently crossed a 100 miles per gallon with my Chevy Volt. For those of you who live in “advanced” societies that follow the metric system, that would be 42.5 km per liter. If you fell out of your chair at that number, that’s probably because you don’t know that the Chevy Volt is an […]

If such an award existed, Ron Johnson would be a Hall of Famer retailer. He was instrumental in making Apple Stores what they are today – the biggest sales per sq ft of retail space and a wake up call for the rest of the retail industry. Now he is the CEO at J C […]

My book on the offshore services industry, co-authored with Gaurav Rastogi, is now out in both print and Kindle versions. In India a print version of the book, published by Penguin, is available in major bookstores and online at Flipkart. In India the book is called Offshore: How India got back on the Global Business […]

With due apologies to my non-Hindi speaking readers. A Bollywood film with a similar title just fit so nicely. It means “Why is Robert Scoble so angry?” And boy is he angry. A couple of days back, Robert Scoble, who hopefully needs no introduction to readers of this blog, posted a rant on the usability […]

On Wednesday, as I trudged out of Oracle Open World after Larry Ellison’s keynote, I learnt that Steve Jobs had passed away. It threw a pall of gloom over me and most of the attendees. The world is poorer without Steve Jobs. On Thursday I was talking to my 15 year old son about the […]

xkcd has a cartoon that beautifully explains why strict password rules have brought us to a pass where it remains relatively easy for a computer to hack the password. But very difficult for people to remember them. My company, like most large corporates, has a password policy that forces the use of numbers, large caps, […]

Yesterday, N R Narayana Murthy retired from Infosys. In a touching farewell in Bangalore, friends and colleagues, present and past, bade him goodbye. There were breaking voices amongst the speakers and moist eyes in the audience. It was a great send-off for a great leader. To Indians, everywhere, Narayana Murthy, means something special. For those […]

In the IT Services industry you have to be able to write code. And English. In fact, not being able to write code may be alright. But without English you just can’t function. And yet, it is surprising how little attention is paid to written communication skills. The BPO industry trained thousands of people in […]